(Part 1) Religion in the south: An interview for Blue Mountain Review
Several years ago I was asked by my friend Clifford Brooks, to do an interview for The Blue Mountain Review. The Blue Mountain Review is a literary magazine of which Clifford is one of the editors. The audience of the magazine is culturally southern but not Christian.
Clifford and I were students together at Shorter University and have kept up with one another through the years. He and I do not share the same theological convictions, and his work often celebrates things that I cannot endorse. However, through the years, he and I have enjoyed an honest, if not always comfortable, dialogue about faith and God’s truth. Today, Clifford is an accomplished poet, writer, and teacher. He has written three collections of poetry and is the founder of the Southern Collective Experience.
For the interview, Clifford sent me five questions, and I submitted my written responses. The interview was published in the second issue of the magazine. I appreciated my friend providing me an opportunity to write and have a voice among those who read The Blue Mountain Review.
The questions Clifford asked challenged me to think not only how to answer but also how to answer in a way that would be understood by those outside of my church culture. As such, in responding to Clifford, I thought a lot about the intersection of true faith and southern culture. Maybe these questions and my answers will be helpful as you think about your faith. The interview was first published in 2016. For the next few weeks, I will be posting my responses to each of Clifford’s questions.
1) How do you think religion plays in the contemporary southern culture?
There is a moment in the evening just before dark when everything changes. It can catch you off guard if you are not careful. I am thinking of the moment when dusk turns to night. Walking through the woods in the afternoon sun is a beautiful experience. And, even after the sun sets over the horizon, there are those last rays of the sun that paint the air with beautiful tones. If you walk deep in the woods, enjoying the last moments of the day, you will find (before you are aware) something happens to change everything. In the afternoon sun, everything is clear: fences, roads, buildings, and far off things can all be seen and understood. You cannot be lost during the day because you can see where you have come from and where you are going. As dusk comes and your ability to see is diminished, you still remember well enough the details from the moments of brighter light, and what you once could see puts away any fear of being lost. In the time between light and darkness, you enjoy the fuzzy hue that the fading light gives. However, before you know it, darkness comes. In the darkness, the woods become a much different place. What just moments before was clear and beautiful is now dark and mysterious. What seemed safe moments ago now seems unsure. No longer can you see from where you came or where you need to go. In the darkness, you imagine seeing things that are not there and stumble over unseen obstacles. Nothing has physically changed, but your ability to understand the world around you has evaporated.
I think southern culture and its understanding of faith have now passed from dusk to night. It is not that the truths of Christianity have changed. Like the trees in the forest that stand still both in the brightness of the noon sun and the darkness of a moonless night, Christians today believe what Christians 2000 years ago believed. It is not that the testimony of scripture has changed. Certainly, the words have not changed and the interpretation of orthodoxy by the majority of Christians has remained constant since the days of the apostles. A convincing case can be made that the Christian influence on our nation has been great. Those historical influences have shaped our laws, our morals, and our lives. As our culture embraces secularism, the light of the biblical worldview dips beyond the horizon and leaves many unprepared to make sense of the world around them.
Certainly, the culture of the south has changed and changed dramatically. Not too long ago, it was inseparably intertwined with the culture of faith. Where you went to church was as much a part of your identity as what football team you cheered for or where you lived. When meeting a new person, one of the first questions you might have asked was, “Where do you go to church?” In those days, we understood the world around us through the lens of a biblical worldview. Evil, sacrifice, suffering, ethics, morality, sexuality, war, peace, government, family, and every other part of life were understood through a framework of faith and our relationship to God. Not all were Christians. Certainly, many identified as Christian merely as a cultural distinction more than one of faith. Even so, the influence of Christianity gave a framework of understanding and meaning. Those days are gone. Like the darkness of night has a way of blurring the memory of what you knew just moments before, southern culture has lost the memory of things before. Some may lament this change and make the case that we need to return to the “good old days” of the way things once were. Others who celebrate the progressively secular southern culture of our day will celebrate the “new south” and make the case that we no longer need to have any cultural connection to faith at all.
That may sound overly gloomy to you, but I do not see it that way at all. Certainly, the abandonment of the moral teachings of Christianity that safeguarded many and the present celebration of hedonism that dances with personal destruction will greatly affect our culture. But those who believe the gospel to be more than just keeping a moral code will recognize that cultural Christianity was often more about acting right than having true faith. In days past, when to be southern meant to be Christian, the distinction between people of faith and those who simply identified with the culture was blurred. Early in my pastoral ministry, I noticed with dismay that around election season those who rarely (if ever) attended church but were seeking office would include their church membership in their campaign material and would—in a very public fashion—start attending church. When the election was over, they would not be seen around the church again until the next election cycle. The sad reality is that they cared little for Jesus and were unconcerned with the gospel but saw the church as a way to advance their agenda in the community. As cultural Christianity has collapsed, so have such superficial expressions of faith. Few today feel the need to identify with the church to be successful in business or politics. No longer is there social pressure to attend church regularly. As the culture around the church has increasingly rejected the church, the distinction between the faithful and those who simply identified with the church culture grows more and more apparent. The good news is that the more distinct followers of Jesus are from the surrounding culture, the clearer their gospel witness is. In the past, some might have assumed that being an American or being a southerner or even being a good citizen was the same thing as being a Christian. That was never true. But to make that case 30 or 50 years ago would have been difficult.
It was once true that the church in the south had a tremendous influence on the culture. The difficult truth is that the church often struggled with the temptation to accommodate the culture’s demands in the hopes of keeping that influence. When it did, its prophetic witness was traded for a temporary cachet. Today, the church in what used to be called the Bible-belt finds itself at odds with the leaders of business and government. Those who still attempt to pander to the secular elite in hopes of gaining a place at the political decision table or invites to socially-connected events look more and more cartoonish. Cultural religion may be dying but faith remains. The influence of the church is strongest not when she defines culture but when she is a prophetic witness in it.
Next week I will answer the question: Do you feel like religion is being stigmatized and/or demonized by the American population as a whole?